Christopher Bedford

Wednesday was May Day — that favorite day of the year when the oppressed workers of the world cast off their chains (riot) and stand up for human dignity (vandalize stuff).

But back in the days before TV, Englishmen of good cheer would celebrate May Day by breaking out their clogs, bell pads and dancing sticks, and hopping about like a bunch of merry idiots, bringing glee to the children and amusement to the senile. We can even catch them around today, flitzing about farmers markets — though the dancers are often a little heftier than in days past.

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Of course, the salad days were not to last, and in the 20th century, May Day became synonymous with Russia. And, as Russians are wont to do, they made it a sad and terrifying holiday. Soviet Russia flipped the spring celebration on its head by marching down the Square for Uncle Joe Stalin, trying to scare the workers of the West with their totally-for-serious faces and near-complete lack of gainful employment.

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Today, the smattering of Morris Dancers and Soviets has dwindled, and instead the workers of the world are represented by a new breed: Unintelligible teenagers who aren’t looking for jobs (but that’s OK because their parents have good jobs).

In Seattle, Washington, Wednesday night, the hipster armies streamed from the coffee shops and college classrooms, rising up against the city’s bourgeois Prius owners and smashing the fascist bicycle cops.

Here are just a few of the ways they liberated America:

Wednesday afternoon, the freedom fighters smashed racism and censorship, attacking an Asian-American reporter and his cameraman who, no doubt, were trying to undermine the street protests by bringing attention to them — something these folks definitely don’t crave. The people then attempted to strike a blow to the Man, trying to wrestle a camera from a working-class traitor to return it to the People.

Though their noble efforts were frustrated by the bicycle cops who fell off their bikes, the struggle lives on.

Also, for some reason, Norway really seems to get the people going.

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Wednesday evening, the working-class heroes created job opportunities for their working-class brothers by strewing rubbish all over the streets for them to clean up the next day. They next demonstrated their college-educated sophistication, frustrating free speech the fascists by blocking the would-be brutal counter-assault by heaping up a newspaper-stand barricade across the street. Though the Yankee aggressors surely wished to turn the barricades into the young heroes’ funeral pyres, the savvy tacticians left narrow escape routes navigable by their skateboards.

Oh, and be sure, comrades — those oligarchs at the Walgreens didn’t escape the masses’ might: The shattered glass will cause them to think twice before tempting the unwashed with soap, the children with candy.